17 Apr 2012

Do you think an operating system should always be installed on the hard disk of a computer?
It was true up until a certain point. Things changed when Knoppix Live CD was released by Klaus Knopper in 2000.Knoppix was a
pioneer in Live CD for Linux, and it still remains one of the most
respectable Linux distributions. Of course, Knoppix is not alone. There
are many more Linux distributions available on the market now that can
run in Live mode.
There are basically two types of media which you can use as your Live
Linux: CD/DVD or USB. Some distributions allow you to have Live USB,
some only work from optical media. In both cases, some distributions
allow you to save changes you’ve made. This feature is called
“Persistence.”
Here are the main ways in which Live Linux can help your business.

#1 Evaluate the features and compatibility of new releases

This is the main reason why most Linux distributions currently have
the ability to run in Live mode. You can check new features, hardware
compatibility, and get a general feel for a Linux distribution right
away without the need to install it on your hard drive.
If your company runs Linux on desktops or servers, Live run can help
you with the initial evaluation of new releases. Of course, thorough
testing should be done when the OS is installed, but running Live can
help you in your decision-making.

#2 Test the security of your network

There are some specific distributions on the market which aim at the
niche of security specialists. The most famous and most powerful of them
is Backtrack Linux.
It is a Live CD which hosts lots of tools for security specialists.
Even if you have no security specialists on staff, it is worth it to
periodically check your network vulnerability using the most common
testing tools.
Of course, you don’t need these tools in your everyday life, that’s
why having Live CD is the most convenient way to run the checks.
Another purpose of Backtrack Linux could be forensic research if you
need to investigate any suspicious activity of users on your systems.

#3 Perform one-off tasks

Do you plan your office party? Do you want to invite a professional
DJ or maybe just prepare your in-house mix? Or maybe you want to make a
short video to show your customers or vendors, but don’t have enough
budget for a professional team of multimedia creators or editors.
Live Linux can help you here. There are distributions which are
oriented to the multimedia market: running your own DJ set or editing
video is easier when you have the proper tools. Musix and PureDyne are good examples.
Of course, usage of multimedia-oriented Live Linux CDs is not the
only area. There are many more niche-oriented distributions which host
useful software for specific tasks.
Because these are one-off tasks, you don’t want and don’t need to
install additional software onto your hard drive. Run it from Live CD!

#4 Secure your transactions

It is not true that you can use only pre-built Live Linux distributions. Some of them like SLAX or Puppy
have a persistence option or the ability to add your own configuration
steps. It can help you, for example, to secure your financial
transactions. Pre-configure your SLAX, save changes as an additional
module and run this operating system from a CD or from USB without
saving further changes. What do you have in this case? A stable, secure
system that prevents an intruder from being able to change it and
activate malicious code. You may use it, for example, during access to
your online bank.

#5 Impress your customers (or suppliers)

You just have finished a very important meeting with a potential
customer. It’s time to say goodbye and leave a business card. Stop! Who
says your business card has to be paper? You can have it on plastic with
your name on one side and a recorded CD or DVD on another. Yes, modern
technology allows you to record information on almost any piece of
plastic.
So, your customer puts your business card into a CD reader (sounds
funny, isn’t it?) and starts…your own operating system! It is branded
with your name. It brings full-featured copy of your website right to
the customer’s desktop. It lists all the marketing materials which you
usually send by post or hand out during presentations - and all of them
are in electronic format.
It’s just another application of Live Linux…
And yes…customers can install it on their own desktop or laptop computers, if they want.

#6 Use for low-maintenance computers

How many times do you see powerful computers with huge hard disks
being used for trivial tasks? Let me give you some examples: print
servers, routers, Internet kiosks. Do they actually need hard disks?
Almost surely the answer is no. Then, why do they boot from a hard disk?
Let’s start them off Live Linux CD or USB instead. As a bonus, you
have stable system which can be easily restored to initial state (and
nothing else) in a matter of seconds. It is well-protected from external
intruders, hackers and silly users — there is no place to record
malicious code. It is easy to maintain as the only operation you may
need there, if any, is reset/reboot. It is quick, because most of the
time it runs from memory. It’s low in resource requirements, because
Linux distributions like TCL, DSL and Puppy were built with low-resource computers in mind.
Dust off your old computer and make it a print server instead of a current quadro-core monster!
As you can see from above, there are lots of places where every
company can employ Linux, and not only Linux working as a normally
installed operating system, but also as small and modest Live Linux
systems.
Do you use any of them in your company right now? How do you like to use Live Linux in your workplace?

This post was first published as guest post at TechRepublic. But readers of my own blog have benefit of yet one more...

Bonus reason. And the most obvious one:

#7 Save your data

When your OS fails to boot (whatever it is, Windows or Linux) or hard disk starts playing funny games... Boot your computer from Live CD or USB with Linux. It can save you lots of time and efforts to save data on computer. Once data are copied to safer place, you can think of re-installing OS or repairing the disk.

About DarkDuck
DarkDuck is a person with whole life spent in IT area. It does not mean only Linux, but also SAP systems. Learn more about him here.

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12 comments:

One application of a liveCD that I have not seen done, is as a secure server. Like your suggestion about the kiosk which runs just in RAM anyway.

But what I mean is that the liveCD (or DVD) has the system on it, but launches a database or other server, accessing _just_the_data_ on a HD. If compromised, or if it's suspected to have been rooted, restart it and you have your complete, known good, binaries again.

This doesn't prevent data loss, but it does ensure that the OS and applications themselves cannot be replaced with trojans or infected with back doors.

Need to make a change? Remaster the boot disk from known good sources on a system that never touches the network, and reboot.

Yes, that's the idea behind the "kiosk" usage. Your system always remains the same after reboot, whatever was done with it before.By the way, it is similar to "restore the factory settings" in embedded versions of Linux (read Android).

In my job as a college reference librarian, I'm also the library's computer nerd. Every once in a while, a student's flash drive won't show up on the computers here when they need to print something. When that happens, I plug in a flash drive on which I've got Bloathi (like Bodhi, except with lots of other programs added) Linux installed. I just plug 'er in, reboot, take the student's flash drive, plug it in, find the requested file, open it in LibreOffice, and print that sucker out. I've saved the bacon (and grades!) of quite a few students like that. -- Fred in St. Louis

Fred, me too! As the IT Director at small university we often rescue student computers who won't boot with a USB Live CD. There always amazed that we can do this and a few even ask if we could install it as their OS. Steve in Calgary.

I use Slax for backup and recovery work. It turns out that Slax can be started from a folder on the hard drive. I have installed Grub4Dos on all my servers and workstations company wide. Menu.lst is set to boot to windows.

If I need to create a backup of a system, or restore a backup of a system, I can remotely edit menu.lst to boot slax and reboot the computer. At that point I can ssh into the machine with no partitions mounted on it. Mount a network share and then backup or reimage the local drive and reboot the machine back to windows.